With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime. Current estimates suggest that illegal trade accounts for nearly one-fifth of global GDP.

McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.

To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crimes phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. McMafia will change the way we look at the world.

Misha Glenny is an award-winning journalist and scholar who was educated at Bristol University in England and charles University in Prague. A former BBC central Europe correspondent, he covered the fall of Communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He has contributed to most major news publications in Europe and the United States and is the author of The Rebirth of History: The Fall of Yugoslavia (which won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1993 for Best Book on Foreign Affairs) and The Balkans: Nationalism, War & The Great Powers, 1804-1999. During the 1990s, he was an International Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. He has also worked as a political consultant in southeastern Europe and is regularly consulted by U.S. and European governments on Balkan issues. Misha Glenny lives in London.